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Cultural Appropriation

This article is the logical continuance of my thoughts on eclecticism, looking at the issue of cultural appropriation -- indigenous spirituality being co-opted by white, upper-middle-class, sheltered Neopagans, often in a mishmash of different tribes/cultures.

To begin, I need to make it clear what indigenous is and is not.  Whenever I hear/read offensive statements such as "Heathenry is the indigenous religion of the White European Folk," part of my brain dies.  While it could be said that things such as Norse, Celtic, and Hellenic polytheism are inherent to the peoples and the culture, I define "indigenous spirituality" as being the original spirituality of groups who are now currently facing oppression + threatened extinction, such as the Saami and the Yezidis.

One of the arguments I've heard to justify racism within the Norse religion is, "Well the Shinto make it clear their religion is only for the Japanese, and the Native American tribes stick to their own."  The thing is, there was never anything within any of the Eddas, Sagas, or historical accounts of the Northern people that say the Gods and traditions are only for the Norse people.  If anything, the Norsemen travelled widely, intermarrying frequently with their Celtic, Slavic, and Saami neighbors, and going as far as the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and the Americas to explore and trade.  They were not xenophobic, and artifacts they brought back with them from other places, including the Birka Buddha, prove as much.

To be fair, I believe that the Norse religion is culturally-based, as far as the way the Gods relate to people, and the way people relate to the Gods.  It looks different from Celtic paganism, which looks different from Hellenic paganism, which looks yet different from anything of one Native American tribe which looks different from yet another Native tribe, and so on, and so on.  To eliminate all of the Norse religion's cultural trappings is to water it down into "generic Paganism".  There are specific ways of offering, specific ways of relating to the Gods, that are different than other forms of paganism.  However, culture is not the same thing as ethnicity.  We have an American culture that many ethnic and racial groups take part of.  I don't have a problem, at all, with people of non-Nordic descent honoring the Norse Gods.   Not only is it not my place to decide, the Heathens in Scandinavia are much more liberal and tolerant than Heathens in the US.  I think this says something significant about racism having no place in the Northern religion -- it never did.  The Gods will call Whom They will.

Furthermore, I do not have a problem with non-Asatruar honoring the Norse Gods, and as you have probably seen by now, I do not identify as Asatru and in any case am not part of the mainstream.  I'm "doing it wrong" so I have no right to tell others the same.  I'm OK with the idea of Wiccans and other groups honoring my Gods, the key word here being "honor".  The biggest problem I have with eclecticism is not that different Gods and pantheons are worked with, but that in most cases (not all, of course) Gods are chosen like food at a buffet table and "used" for energy in spellwork, and then discarded without so much as an offering for Their trouble.  The attitude accompanying that belief is almost always "Well They're just facets of the All, and I can do whatever I want."  These are Gods.  I assure you the ancient Norsemen, the ancient Celts, the ancient Hellenes, and other groups saw their Gods as being living, breathing, actual Deities, not interchangeable with each other.  Frey is not Dionysus is not Tammuz.  They may have similar "currents" but Their personalities and modus operandi are very, very different.  If you ask for something from a God or Goddess, you should be willing to give something in return.

Another problem I have with "borrowing" is the preponderance of "Native American shay-mans" I've met over the years: people of Caucasian descent who think because they've read a couple of books and can shake a rattle, that they are practicing Native American religion.  Beyond the obvious fact that every Native American tribe is different and with different beliefs (no, not all of them believe in "The Great Spirit"). 

To illustrate: I know someone who is half-Oneida, and spent his formative years on a res.  He attends pow-wows and other First Nations gatherings and has had random white people in attendance come up to him and ask him to teach "his great shamanic wisdom".  Not because he advertises himself as being a shaman (for what it's worth, he is spiritual, but not "that way"), but just because he looks obviously Native and will attend the event in proper dress.  After a few years of getting offended by this hubris, he decided to start collecting rocks and feathers and sticks off the ground and selling them at pow-wows to whites for exorbitant amounts of money, claiming they had "great holy Native powers", not that he was doing it for the money, but because he figured he was teaching them a hard lesson about how not every Native person is a shaman, and it's rude to infringe upon gatherings and feel *entitled* to learn from "the great Native shamans".  He said, "This is actual wisdom and worth more than the $50 they're paying for a stone." 

He is of the opinion that it's not necessarily their whiteness, but the entitlement mentality.  If a white person were to go to a tribal elder and barter appropriately for learning things, and live among the tribe and understand some of the harsh realities of what the tribe has gone through and continues to go through, many Natives apparently wouldn't have a problem with that, according to him, but it's that people feel *entitled* to borrow from other "new, exciting, exotic" cultures to be anything than what they are.  The First Nations people were first oppressed by the American government and Caucasian neighbors and later on exploited so that an entire culture is looked at as a novelty rather than what it is.  There are many who get heartily sick of being looked at as more "inherently spiritual" especially after their cultures have been largely suppressed, oppressed, and in any case changed drastically.  When you buy some fake Native-looking piece of junk to use at your wannabe ritual, I hope you keep the Lakota Declaration of War in mind.  It applies to you.  I think they're justified.

So, in sum, I feel that the Norse religion was never "closed", and should not be "closed".  The Germanic peoples are not in any danger of extinction despite some groups' xenophobia towards other ethnic groups.  I believe most American Heathens are, in fact, "borrowing" because their beliefs, practices, and worldview are very different from Scandinavian Heathens.  I believe in terms of groups that are *actually* indigenous and oppressed, these spiritualities should not be borrowed from unless one is willing to immerse oneself in their culture and take on the sorrows as well as the wisdom of the tribe, taking on the politics as well as the religion.

(C) 2008 Sigrun Freyskona.